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All Rise...

Appellate Judge James A. Stewart meets an ice person once in a while.

The Charge

"We don't come to Antarctica because we are in love with Antarctica. We
come to Antarctica because we want a mystery to solve and a challenge."

The Case

Ice People opens without dialogue, with some beautiful views of
Antarctica at night, showing the lights of civilization against a cold, dark
backdrop. For the first three minutes, I almost thought this could be an entry
in WLIW's Visions series.

Soon, however, we see—and hear—people joking about carrying
sunglasses and other aspects of life at McMurdo Station. The music gives way to
the ambient noise of the wind, and feet crunching the snow and ice. There are a
lot of silent or nearly silent moments in Ice People as viewers get to
watch a group of geologists digging up fossils or see the bright colors of their
tents against the drab landscape.

Despite often striking visuals, Anne Aghion's Ice People is at times
hard to watch. The cinema verite style is meant to let the geologists speak for
themselves, but there's no revelation you haven't seen in any other documentary
about the icy continent. The documentary also lacks context. There's no
narrative explanation, and it doesn't even provide on-screen identification for
the people featured (although the names are all listed in the credits, if for
some reason you want to take notes and then go back through the film). At times,
it just felt like I was watching the home videos of strangers.

I can't criticize the look or sound of the film. Both picture and sound come
across well.

The cinema verite nature of the documentary could have been combined with
illuminating bonus features to create a more informative package, but there
aren't any extras here.

There are interesting moments and comments, so Ice People isn't a
total waste of time. But other documentaries, including Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World,
have covered this icy ground in more interesting ways.

The Verdict

Guilty of being a good idea that leaves something to be desired in the
execution.